Black box software testing: By Cem Kaner & James Bach
Specification-based testing
- Video lectures
- Part 1 Introduction to specification-based testing [22:09]
- Putting your work in context: the purpose of this spec and of your testing of it
- The scope of the specification
- Introduction to active reading.
- Part 2 Active reading and specification analysis [24:35]
- Exploring the spec with questioning strategies
- Applying catalogs of context-free questions
- Applying the Satisfice Heuristic Test Strategy Model to spec analysis
- Part 3 Ambiguity analysis [17:18]
- Identifying ambiguities in specifications
- Testability issues arising out of (or writable into) the specification
- Part 4 Specification reviews and specification based tests [22:25]
- Technical reviews
- Traceability
- Summing up
- Part 1 Introduction to specification-based testing [22:09]
- Lecture slides [PPT]
- Activity Notes Ambiguity analysis of a specification fragment
- Examples
- Essay test questions (specifications)
- Essay test questions (questioning techniques)
- Readings and tools: See the links in the slides
The biggest challenge in specification-based testing is figuring out what the specification says. Specifications are often hundreds or thousands of pages long. Organizing and reconciling its many treatments of the same issues, and its remarkably light treatments of some other issues, requires a conscious, active interaction with the set of documents that together make up the specification.
This section of the course presents a variety of active reading techniques to help you determine what's in the spec, including a demonstration of the Heuristic Test Strategy Model.
Working with the specification in the small (analyzing a few paragraphs at a time rather than a few chapters), we consider the many sources of ambiguity, and how to spot them.
Finally, we cover the traceability matrix and the issues of specification coverage.
We are setting up a mailing list for announcements about this course and, perhaps, a tightly focused and moderated discussion of how to teach it or self-study with it. (This won't be a general, high-traffic, intro-to-testing discussion.) If you're interested in the course, please sign up by sending us an email. We will NOT share your email address with third parties or send commercial advertising to you.
We are publishing this course under a Creative Commons license that allows you to freely reuse and distribute the materials and to modify the slides and associated printable materials (but not the videos). We would be appreciate a few mirror sites, to reduce the growing burden on our servers. If you can help in this way, or any other way, please send a note to Cem Kaner.
